What’s our vision for the future of learning?

30/12/2013 by
Future of Learning

Mindshift    |    30 December 2013 The following is an excerpt from Open: How We’ll Live, Work, and Learn in the Future written by British learning Futurist David Price. For 150 years, formal education has adopted an ‘inside-out’ mindset – schools and colleges have usually been organised around the needs of the educators, not the learners. In areas such as research, this is nothing to be embarrassed about. Ground-breaking inventions and pioneering new thinking often arise from the selfishness that informs so-called ‘blue-sky’ research. Defending such freedoms from the external drive for practical and commercial implementation has often encouraged a necessary … [Read more...]

Filed Under: MOOCs, Schools, Society Tagged With:

On the unbearable lightness of being Kevin

29/12/2013 by

29 December 2013 There's a view abroad in some quarters - you can guess  which -  that improving the performance of our schools, seemingly falling against international benchmarks, is not about injecting more money but about something called “values”.  In an opinion piece earlier this year, the Grattan Institute’s Ben Jensen seemed to agree with the tag line reading “raising teachers’ classroom skills is far more important than raising money”.  But what’s the key to raising teachers’ classroom skills?  Jensen concluded that it requires ….teachers having mentors, getting proper feedback about their work, being required to do research on education in collaboration with other … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budget, Commonwealth policies, Grattan Institute, Schools, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

FactCheck: is Australian education highly equitable?

05/12/2013 by

The Conversation    |    5 December 2013 “The OECD says that we are a high equity nation in terms of our students… I don’t believe there is an equity problem in Australia.” – Education Minister Christopher Pyne, Lateline interview, 26 November 2013. In the heat of political tensions around school funding, Education Minister Christopher Pyne has been forced to respond to longstanding debates about equity in Australian education. On ABC’s Lateline last week, Pyne said Australia is a “high equity nation” according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He also said he does not believe there is “an equity problem” in our country. So what does the OECD … [Read more...]

Filed Under: PISA, Schools Tagged With: , ,

Latest PISA results ‘cause for concern’

04/12/2013 by
PISA Infographic

ACER News    |     3 December 2013   Australian mathematics and reading achievement in decline    |     Significant gaps in student achievement by gender, Indigenous status, location and wealth  A report released  by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) reveals the mathematics and reading skills of Australian 15-year-olds have slipped backwards over the past decade.  Releasing the report, PISA 2012: How Australia measures up, ACER’s Director of Educational Monitoring and Research, Dr Sue Thomson said, Despite still performing above the OECD average, Australia’s backwards slide in achievement shows that there is some cause for concern. The 2012 Programme for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: acer, Schools, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

PISA infographic

04/12/2013 by
PISA Infographic

… [Read more...]

Filed Under: Schools Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Administrative Arrangements Order 2013

19/09/2013 by
machinery 3

Australian Government     |    18 September 2013 The Administrative Arrangements Order establishes the machinery of government for the time being, lists the responsibilities of the departments of state and legislation administered by each minister. The Department of Education Matters dealt with by the Department of Education Schools education policy and programmes, including vocational education and training in schools, but excluding migrant adult education Schooling transitions policy and programmes including career pathways Education and training transitions policy and programmes Youth affairs and programmes, including youth transitions Early childhood and childcare … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Government Tagged With: , , ,

Wrong fix for failing schools?

11/04/2013 by

Grattan Institute     |   23   February 2013 On 21 February, the Independent Schools Council of Australia fired the first big shot in this year's school funding debate.  ISCA threatened to release figures showing that many private schools would be worse off under the federal government's new Gonski school funding model.  The government hit back immediately, saying the numbers were wrong. The federal opposition claimed the government was reviving the private school "hit list" supposedly created by former Labor leader Mark Latham.  It's an election year, but Australians have seen this school puppet show many times before.  For decades, politicians and educators have argued over funding, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budget, Grattan Institute, Schools, Society Tagged With: , , , , ,

Australian Financial Review Education Supplement 25 March 2013

26/03/2013 by

This is Australian Financial Review's own summary of lead items in its online edition. As this is a subscription service, you or your organisation will need to have a subscription to The Australian Financial Review to view the full article. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ We should match Asia's hunger for language We in Australia can help our neighbours to acquire English. But have we considered what we can learn from them in building our own second and third language skills to fit us for the Asian century? Politically desperate Gillard throws reform to the wolves Here's a political … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Budget, Coalition policies, Commonwealth policies, Higher education policy, International, MOOCs, Schools, Tertiary media Tagged With: , , ,
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